With Playground's split family support, you can divide a household into two groups to better manage billing, communication, and attendance for split families. This ensures that each guardian only has a view of their current balance and no additional information is shared between the groups.

Who Is This Guide For & When You Need It

If you have families where guardians share responsibilities (split households) or when a guardian belongs to more than one family setup (blended), this guide walks you through what to do and when.

Scenario	Use "Split Family"	Use "Blended Family"
Guardians share a student, but live in different households, and should have a separate view of billing & attendance	Split the family
Single guardian with children from different relationships, different other guardians per child		Blend the family

Split a Family

From your Admin Dashboard, navigate to the Students tab under My School.
Use the search bar to locate the student record you wish to split.
1. Click on the student's name to navigate to their profile.
Click on the Settings tab and then scroll down the page to the Account section.
Click the red Split family button.
Name both groups on the Split family window.
1. We typically recommend using the guardians' names to avoid confusion.
Assign guardians to each group via the dropdown menu.
1. This should be done based on the relationship of the guardians to each other.
After assigning guardians, click Next to launch the billing assignment wizard, which walks you through assigning charges before you confirm:
1. Assign future payments:
  1. Each guardian group should owe half the amount for upcoming debits: The debits will be split into halves and evenly assigned to each guardian group.
  2. Group 1 should owe all upcoming debits: All upcoming debits will be assigned to Group 1.
  3. Group 2 should owe all upcoming debits: All upcoming debits will be assigned to Group 2.
  4. Do nothing with upcoming debits; I will manually adjust this later: Until you manually assign these items, neither of the guardian groups will see upcoming debits. Click here if you select this option and need more help with assigning debits.
  🚨 You will not have the option to assign future payments if the student doesn't have any future debits listed on their account.
2. Click Next: Assign past payments after making your selection
3. Assign past payments:
  1. Use payment method to automatically assign the group: For example, debits paid with a payment method from Parent 1 will be assigned to that group.
    
    If there are any payments without or an unknown payment method, you will need to choose which group you want to assign it to.
  2. Assign all past transactions to Group 1: All past debits and credits will be assigned and visible to guardians from Group 1.
  3. Assign all past transactions to Group 2: All past debits and credits will be assigned and visible to guardians from Group 2.
  4. Do nothing with past transactions; I will manually adjust this later: Until you manually assign these items, neither of the guardian groups will see past debits or credits. Click here if you select this option and need more help with assigning debits.
4. Click Next: Review family split after making your selection.
Review the split family to make sure everyone is in the right group with the correct payments applied.
Select the checkbox under Acknowledgement and click Finish to split the family.

💡 The wizard assigns existing debits and credits to the two guardian groups automatically — you don’t need to assign them manually after the split. Payment chains stay together: a credit and any charges it paid are always assigned to the same group.

🚨 Subsidy transactions are never assigned automatically. After the split, a warning banner flags any that need manual review and assignment.

🚨 Guardian payment methods will display on the All section of a student's Billing tab after the family is split. You can click on the ellipsis(. . .) next to the card or account in the Payment methods section to remove the payment method, the guardians will have to add their payment method once more under their group via mobile or web. Guardians must have payment methods added under their specific groups.

Edit a Split Family

From your Admin Dashboard, navigate to the Students tab under My School.
Use the search bar to locate the student record you wish to edit.
1. Click on the student's name to navigate to their profile.
Click on the Settings tab.
1. Scroll down the page to the Account section.
Click on Edit Split Family in black.
Click on Unsplit Family on the bottom-left of your view of the Update split family window.
Confirm the merger on the pop-up that appears.

Bill Split Families

Prefer to watch a video? Click here

🚨 Split families lose visibility into the All tab of their student's Payments tab. You will want to recreate each upcoming charge for each guardian.

From your Admin Dashboard, navigate to the Students tab under My School.

Use the search bar to locate the student you would like to bill, and then click on the student's name to navigate to their profile.
Click on the Billing tab.
Click Billing Actions in the top-right and then click Create Debits.
Select whether you want to create the debit for a specific group or split the debit by a specified percentage.
1. If you select Pick a group, select which group you want to assign it to by clicking into the dropdown.
2. If you select Split by %, enter the percentage split for both groups. After entering one percentage, the second will auto-calculate.
Complete the Item Name and Price fields.
Complete the remaining fields for the bill. Click here for more in-depth instructions on creating billing plans.
Click Save item at the bottom of the page to confirm this charge.

If you encounter errors while billing split families, follow these troubleshooting steps:

Navigate to the child’s profile and open the Settings tab.
Select the option to edit split family settings.
Ensure each guardian is assigned to the correct group within the account.
Save changes and retry the billing process. These steps can help resolve common payment errors caused by incorrect guardian configurations.

💡 Selecting Split by % generates two independent billing plans — one per guardian group. Amounts and any applied discounts are calculated to the exact cent, and each plan can be edited and paid independently.

Subsidy Billing for Split Families

Click on the Subsidies tab under Billing.
Click on the agency you are recording a deposit for.
Click Add Deposit in the top-right.
To edit a previous deposit, click on the ellipsis(. . .) next to the deposit, then click Edit.
Complete the information in the Details section at the top of the page.
Use the search bar in the Distribution section to locate the student(s). The group names are listed under the name of the student.
Enter the information for the split-family student(s).
Complete the rest of the deposit.

To generate statements for individual children rather than entire family units:

Open the financial statement generation feature within a student’s billing profile.
Use the dropdown menu to select the specific child for whom you wish to create the statement.
Complete the process to generate and view/download a per-child invoice, enabling accurate record-keeping.

Assign Debits and Credits to Guardian Groups

When a family is split, the student’s billing page will display new tabs for each parent or guardian group. For example, you might see tabs for Parent 1 (Arjun) and Parent 2 (Liam) in addition to the default All tab.

Unassigned: This tab contains all existing debits and credits created before the split occurred. These charges must be assigned to the correct group so each parent only sees their own billing plan.

Before You Begin

Navigate to the student’s profile and open the Billing tab.
Delete all Unposted statements to avoid conflicts.
Create a new billing plan for each guardian group as needed.

Assigning Debits

Go to the Unassigned tab.
Click the three dots (…) menu on the very top of the Billing Plan
Select Assign to group.
Choose the correct guardian group (e.g., Parent 1 or Parent 2).
Repeat for each debit.

Assigning Credits

After assigning debits, assign the corresponding credits to the same parent group.
This ensures the account displays accurate balances, including:
- Amount Paid
- Current Balance
- Amount Overdue
- Amount Unposted

👉 Tip: Keep track of which debits you assign to which parent so the matching credits are always applied to the same group.

👉 This ensures each guardian group receives only the debits and credits assigned to them, keeping billing accurate for split families.

Troubleshooting Common Issues in Split Family Billing

If you face errors when entering payments or billing individual children:

Open the child’s profile and navigate to the billing settings.
Verify that guardians are correctly assigned to their respective groups.
Double-check group-specific charges to ensure they are properly assigned to the right guardian group. Taking these steps ensures payment and billing processes function as intended without errors.

Blended Families

A blended family is when a guardian has children with different sets of primary guardians.

What is a Blended Family?

A blended family in Playground happens when one guardian (like a parent) has children in different family groups with different sets of guardians. For example:

Guardian A + Guardian B share Students 1 & 2.
Guardian A + Guardian C share Student 3.

Guardian A needs to appear in both family accounts so they can toggle between them.

💡 The shared guardian will need to be added to each family account separately. This guardian will create two separate accounts. The guardian can use the same email address. They will be asked to link accounts in order to use the Switch Accounts function to easily toggle between families.

Step-by-Step: How to Create a Blended Family